Thursday, August 21, 2014

Alas, Poor Twinkie! We Knew You

Once upon a time in Chicago, a man came up with the idea to fill a sponge cake with banana flavored cream filling and so the Twinkie was born in the hard times of the Great Depression. Two cakes sold for a nickel, a price that most could afford even when money was tight.

The Twinkie became popular, like so many other treats manufactured by Continental Baking. The Hostess line churned out small packets that were perfect to drop into a child's lunch box, and a kid could grab a pair of Twinkies after school and not have to bother Mom. It was a typical convenience food of the Baby boomer generation, and with so many members, there was a high demand for Twinkies.

Alas, poor Twinkie. Somewhere in the 1960s people started to become concerned about what was going into their stomachs. Like so many other baked good with a long shelf life, Twinkies were peppered with preservatives. Then eaters became concerned with fat content and calories and starches and sugars and dieting, and Twinkies were not quite so beloved. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to eat so many of them, people mumbled. Maybe we should give our children carrot sticks in their lunch boxes instead of sugary treats.

Meanwhile, at the factory where Twinkies rolled down the assembly line, the employees enjoyed the bounty of a popular product that was in high demand. Then the sales started to slide, but the workers were used to a certain wage and there was no budging. The drop in sales collided with the ever increasing cost of production, and then one day the bakery had to go out of business.

By 2013, not all that many people were eating Twinkies. The iconic snack cake was soon to be barred from school cafeterias for failing to meet nutrition standards, and with so many worried about obesity, sales in general were too depressed to keep the factory going.

That situation would not last, either. The employees voted in the union, and were just about to sit down to negotiate for higher wages and increased benefits when they learned that the Illinois bakery would have to go. There simply aren't enough Twinkies being sold, and there isn't a way to increase the selling price without harming sales. Fewer workers are needed to make fewer Twinkies, and if the bakery has to pay those workers more, it can't afford to keep as many on.

Machines can do some of the work once done by humans, and machines don't go on strike or demand concessions. The machines became cheaper than the unionized work force, and so, the unionized workforce will become the unemployed while the machines keep cranking out Twinkies in the three remaining Hostess bakeries.

Twinkies are still fairly cheap. And it often feels like we're still in a Great Recession. The more things change, right?